December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: CJR returned to sender
by tbyfield＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:30 PM 10/25/95, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > Should they also reject the same content (RSA-PERL) delivered >in any of the following ways: > > Printed on paper > Printed on paper in OCR font > Printed on paper in barcode > Printed on paper with magnetic ink (like checks) > > The lines being drawn here seem very arbitrary. FWIW, in principle I agree with Michael and Tim: 90% of the point of the lark was the absurdity of a T-shirt being a "munition." OTOH, the arbitrariness of ITAR enforcement--regardless of the form of the CJRs filed--is very troubling. When the USG so selectively enforces federal law, one has to wonder what criterion is informing the selection. And this "little" adventure could (IANAL, etc.) have a bright side: if the CJR were submitted in a verifiable way (courier, certified, etc.) and the agency in question had documentably refused to examine the materials submitted or to take the application seriously, wouldn't this weaken any subsequent effort to prosecute in another, more practical case involving the same code? If so, maybe something halfway between a T-shirt and a book--y'all can figure out what--encoded with machine-readable source for PGP might be in order. In order not for some silly thread but, rather, for a meticulously documented CJR, with an eye toward slowly upping the ante: submit the exact same code in a variety of less and less absurd formats until the USG chooses to deal with it--all the while presuming that their failure to consider a CJR in this or that format constituted a de facto approval for export. ted

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Bill Gates on anonymity
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BEGIN QUOTE I'm not suggesting we do away with all forms of anonymity. I can imagine electronic communities where anything goes and no one can trace the real origin of information - or verify its authenticity. You would enter such a community - by deciding to read or watch the information posted there - at your own risk, and if people said offensive or untrue things to you, your only recourse would be to set the record straight in the same forum. Consenting adults should be entitled to participate in this kind of community. But kids certainly should not. END QUOTE The full text is at http://nytsyn.com/live/Gates/270_092795_082520_2997.html

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Linux security issues
by don＠cs.byu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone heard of any information on the Linux swap partition, for example, if it does me the favor of storing my pgp passphrase? Anyone who's interested in compiling PGP under ELF, add ASMDEF="-DSYSV" to the end of their linux make line. Don

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ANNOUNCEMENT: sepp-talk mailing list
by Erik Bataller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The sepp-talk mailing list is a forum for comments and discussion regarding the Secure Electronic Payment Protocol (SEPP), proposed by MasterCard to support credit card payments over the Internet. The SEPP specification is available for review from the MasterCard home page: http://www.mastercard.com The CommerceNet consortium operates this mailing list as a service to the Internet community. To subscribe to the sepp-talk mailing list, send email to: majordomo(a)commerce.net ...with a message body of: subscribe sepp-talk <your full name> You should receive a confirmation message which includes instructions for unsubscribing from the list. Shortly, CommerceNet will provide a WWW archive of this list on it's server. A notice will be sent to the mailing list.

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FBI/CIA/NSA, let's merge them all into one. [???!!!]
by Brad Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

AP on 10/25/95: FBI Gets CIA Help On Olympics The FBI and CIA are working together to deal with "substantial" threats to security at next summer's Atlanta Olympics, top administration officials told senators Wednesday. [...] Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska ... chided the FBI for seeking to build a $37 million code encryption center that he said would duplicate facilities operated by the National Security Agency.

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Re: Let's Not Merge Mailing Lists, OK?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm cc:-ing this to both lists just this once, because this message is more or less administrative. I'm not trying to merge www-buyinfo with cypherpunks. tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) said: >There is great danger in constantly "casting the net wider," in trying to >reach more and more people. I understand the temptation for some on both >lists to cross-post some messages. I urge that they do this, as Bob H. has >done on occasion, by personally forwarding the message, with only _one_ of >the lists getting it. (This because the real danger is as above, where >multiple lists are in the recipient or cc: fields, and followups semi-spam >multiple lists.) I agree with Tim. I've been doing one-way forwards from cypherpunks to www-buyinfo for most of a year now. Most of the people on www-buyinfo are business people who understand that digital commerce *is* financial cryptography, but they don't have time to read all of cypherpunks to find the e$ juicy-bits. When I do this, I put a "(cpx)" in the subject line so that the sizable community of cypherpunks on www-buyinfo can filter them out and won't have to see double. I've gotten a lot of fan-mail for this, even though it's not really in keeping with the original charter for www-buyinfo, which seems to have been subsumed by other groups, like the e-payments list and others. Recently Dave Kristol has said that he's going to retool www-buyinfo, and when he does, I'm hoping to have set up my own structure of 3 hypermail archived e$ lists (a netwide e$ digest, a discussion list, and a newsletter). I'm talking to about 3 or 4 different people about it, and I should have the details worked out within a few days, with an announcement next week, if I'm lucky. Anyway, I've sent a few messages in the opposite direction on occasion (from www-buy to c'punx), but I do try to hold it down, mostly because whatever the topic is, we've usually talked about it on cypherpunks before. I should note, however, that there's a good-sized discussion, for www-buy, anyway, going on over on over there about anonymity, which has heated up over the past few days. I forwarded a message here from Nick Szabo as an example of it yesterday. The cross-posting Tim's talking about is a result of that discussion. There's a whole lot of "what do we need anonymity for, anyway?" opinion in the business community, and it should be addressed with as much reason as possible, and not by shouting them down with moral arguments to the contrary, no matter how right those moral arguments are. Fortunately, I believe there's a great business case for anonymity, and frankly, there had better be, because, in a cryptoanarchic geodesic economy like the one we're fixing to have, nothing is going to survive without a market. Anyway, like I said, I agree with Tim. If you want to post to cypherpunks, you should subscribe to cypherpunks, and suffer the firehose like the rest of us have to do. However, those of us who are on both lists, especially those of us longer-term cypherpunks like Hal, and Nick, and Adam Shostack, should be the ones to forward messages, if any, to cypherpunks, because they are the ones who know whether cypherpunks has seen this before. For instance, the posting of Nick Szabo's that I sent to cypherpunks was more of a rah-rah exercise (no pun intended) than anything else. It was so well thought out that I thought it bore passing around a bit. However, as an actual contribution to the information content on cypherpunks, what Nick said has been said on cypherpunks before, if not typically with such eloquence. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: Anonymity: A Modest Proposal
by loki＠obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 3:35 PM 10/23/95, Futplex wrote: >Lance Cottrell writes: >> I think one solution to this problem is to encourage (require) the use of >> pseudonym servers. Having a server like alpha as the entity on the from >> line has several advantages. >> >> 1) Less Spam since it takes some effort to set up the nym and it will be >> taken away as soon as the spam starts. > >I fear this will be a short-lived gain. User-friendly scripts for >establishing pseudonymous accounts are pretty easy to write. They may be >beyond the average Fast Money Maker, but I expect myself and others will be >putting them out on the Net for general consumption. One need not automate the process of setting up anonymous accounts. One might also require some sort of exchange before activating the nym to verify that the return address is working. <SNIP> >Semi-permanent account status confers privileges to the user, IMHO. I >believe a pseudonymous account ideally should be treated the same as a >regular account on an ISP. For example, an admin will not unilaterally close >an account upon receiving a single complaint about the account user. >Certainly I don't know of an ISP that routinely blocks its users' accounts >from sending mail to selected other accounts. Lest I seem too presumptuous, >let me say that I realize all immediately foreseeable pseudonymizers are >free services. Clearly these service providers can set whatever policies they >wish, and are not directly competing with the fee-charging ISPs. Perhaps >future fee-charging pseudonymizers will consider these criteria in offering >enhanced services. > >-Futplex <futplex(a)pseudonym.com> I agree. With both free and for-fee nym servers must clearly spell out what actions will result in the termination of the nym. Perhaps 1 spam, 1 systematic harassment, or more than 5 serious complaints per month. Obvious this would need to be tuned to preserve free speech while allowing abusers to be quickly squelched. I would imagine an ecology of these servers would develop with some short lived permissive servers mixed with long lived more restrictive ones. -Lance -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMI8kEfPzr81BVjMVAQF3QAgAh+Q03VU3b69uQqylri/S2EJvfS5MqQ4V JRTZRu8ZQTjb7Ic6KowQXogXG0yAv/GUa6jEWup+fO1omR2t/s7AtXjcFC6du1hh iwSeRw1QVtyspDu6FHAJNL98uG3b0taSHJxfAueA4CA8lZm00vP1exM1A0ndPjXN 6/oM/O5xdUET2tanlpcW2WDdVOZDDGQGvMORlrG8WmJKWebmcg9GnrE5gyZLs3Wr ijze7CccyPLnET4dZiry9Qd/NRx2hgdfkDopTNiTbvmGCXulzqBpqSZ689KDITAK MNgSagZKgOsy7pRGCFSK9EPljZ2IwPtCrE/s9YX0kkJtDhq84SU3EQ== =UBy5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Anonymous Account Help
by hroller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been having problems trying to set up an account at alpha.c2.org. I have followed all the instructions but am still unable to get a reply or anything that works right. What I am doing wrong? This is what I have done so far. I am about to pull my hair out. I have been working on this for 2 days now. Anyway, 1. Created a Reply Block like this: Request-Remailing-To: hroller(a)metronet.com 2. I then encrypted it with remailer(a)replay.com's Public Key. I prepended it with the "Encrypted: PGP". 3. I then created the following message: From: hroller(a)alpha.c2.org Password: MyPassword Reply-Block: :: Anon-To: remailer(a)replay.com :: Encrypted: PGP -------Begin PGP Message---------- "The Encrypted Reply Block Message" ------End PGP Message------------- 4. I then sent it to "alias(a)alpha.c2.org". Then I wait. But never get anything from alpha.c2.org. I have gotten some anonymous messages from replay, but they are still encrypted so I don't know what it is sending me. Any help you can supply would be greatly appreciated. hroller

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Re: [Noise] Paranoia in the Comics
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:27 PM 10/25/95 -0700, you wrote: >This has no real crypto relevance, but some anarchistic relevance. > >Sometimes you find anti-government paranoia in the strangest of places... >In the Ziggy strip for 10/25/95, Ziggy is in a Psychiatrist's office. The >shrink is stating "You're afraid of the government, are you? I'm required >to report that sort of thing you know." Ziggy has long been a libertarian/right winger. Note a Sunday strip of a few years ago. Ziggy bends over and looks closely at some red ants who are carrying picket signs reading "Down with Communism", "Freedom Now", etc. Ziggy observes "It had to happen sometime." Since we are being semi-irrelevant here, yesterday's Broom Hilda strip was good for the net "Universal Access" wars. Broom Hilda sits down at a computer to take a ride on the Information Superhighway. The computer says "Sorry, the information superhighway is a toll road." "What's the toll"? "Brains." So Broom Hilda gives up and sets off on a tour of the back roads of America. Note the proof that competition provides better service than government-monopoly Universal Service. After years of being one of the few Local Telcos that charged residential customers metered rates for local calls, NYNEX (New York Telephone) has announced some flat rate pricing plans. Nothing like a little local loop competition. DCF "School Bus Safety - Are your children safe? - Story at 11:00" -- They're safer on the bus than they are when they arrive at their local institution for the mentally/morally defective.

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Re: your mail about Dr. Dobbs CD-ROM. (fwd)
by Cypherpunks Maintenance Account 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----- Forwarded message from Unicorn ----- >From cpunks Fri Sep 12 07:14:53 1997 Message-ID: <19970912124749.42396(a)sequent.com> Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 12:47:49 +0200 From: Unicorn <hvdl(a)sequent.com> To: coderpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: your mail about Dr. Dobbs CD-ROM. References: <c=US%a=_%p=EDS%l=AUADMEDS001-970911232759Z-1185(a)sg-energy-nt01.sg.eds.com> X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81 In-Reply-To: <c=US%a=_%p=EDS%l=AUADMEDS001-970911232759Z-1185(a)sg-energy-nt01.sg.eds.com>; from Garrard, David on Fri, Sep 12, 1997 at 08:27:59AM +0800 X-Files: The Truth Is Out There! X-Disclaimer: Comments contained do not necessarily represent thoseof my current employer. X-Copyright: Portions of this message may be subject to copyright.(c) 1994-1997 Hans "Unicorn" Van de Looy. Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk --- On Sep 12, Garrard, David apparently wrote -------------------------------- > Has anyone gotten a copy of the Dr Dobb's Cryptography CDROM outside the > US yet ? Nope. But where did you hear that it was available inside the US already? > David Garrard --- and thus sprach: "Garrard, David" <David.Garrard(a)EXCH.EDS.com> ------------ Ciao, Unicorn. -- ======= _ __,;;;/ TimeWaster ================================================ ,;( )_, )~\| A Truly Wise Man Never Plays PGP: 64 07 5D 4C 3F 81 22 73 ;; // `--; Leapfrog With a Unicorn... 52 9D 87 08 51 AA 35 F0 ==='= ;\ = | ==== Youth is not a time in life, it's a State of Mind! ======== ----- End of forwarded message from Unicorn -----

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MD4-derived hash functions
by JMKELSEY＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 13:14:41 -0400 >From: hallam(a)w3.org >Subject: Re: MD5 weakness >Ron has not mentioned such an event to me and if that were the case I would >seriously doubt that he would not have been told about it. The only comment he >generally makes is that he wrote MD5 because "MD4 was making me nervous". In the MD5 RFC, I seem to recall the statement that MD4 was trading off too much strength for additional speed. However, sometime around that time, it came out that there were attacks on two-round variants of MD4, which is the stated reason for the development of RIPE-MD. Does anyone know whether Rivest was motivated to design MD5 by the partial attacks on MD4, or whether those came later? (This is totally idle curiousity.) >NIST and the NSA trusted MD4 sufficiently to base SHA upon it. SHA is preferable >in many ways to MD5, it has a different approach to extending the scheduling and >resist differential cryptanalysis. There is a problem with the compressor >function of MD5 which I dislike. All of the well-known software hash functions seem to be based on MD4 these days, but that doesn't mean much about the security of MD4--3DES with three independent keys looks pretty strong, as does 3DES with two independent keys, but that doesn't mean that single DES is a strong enough cipher for modern applications. One issue that exists with MD5, but not with SHA or the longer hash versions of Haval, is that MD5 has only a 128 bit hash function output, which corresponds loosely to having a 64-bit key. This implies that a wealthy enough opponent could determine a pair of MD5 inputs that collide, and conceivably use this in an attack. I think we should stick to 160 bit or longer hashes for future designs. (See P. van Oorschot and M. Weiner, "Parallel Collision Search with Application to Hash Functions and Discrete Logarithms," in the proceedings of the 1994 Fairfax Conference, for example). As an aside, what hash functions are there out there that look reasonably strong, have hash outputs of at least 160 bits, and aren't based on MD4? Some of the Snefru variants with many passes (eight?) come to mind, and the GOST hash function fits all the criteria, except I have a hard time convincing myself it's as strong as it claims to be. Is there a generic construction for arbitrary-length hash functions from good block or stream ciphers? > Phill --John Kelsey, jmkelsey(a)delphi.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMI+Mc0Hx57Ag8goBAQFJ9gP/VMvNefSm77prSY/NMbJfGO1EVmQrUAHn kEQEse+cXiaoJTe7njxUqycuDX0PN09C4XhNVOQJ6IBpCPZOKQMiXsI9FwAfjGWb mibwSfzyiXwxny1kYgfDCffS8KwdlWiVjxj1+MhvqhGQnxPsVA6UVrSCyAyHPZVJ UTXUWBJlJho= =2Pti -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Welcome to cypherpunks
by stevenw＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Why am I getting this when I am already subscribed to the >>list?????? > >Because someone signed the list up to the list...probably inadvertently. >They probably sent something to majordomo with a line like: > >subscribe cypherpunks cypherpunks(a)toad.com > >thinking it actually made sense for some reason...then again they might >have done it on purpose. Well, the Welcome message says this: ->If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, ->you can send mail to "Majordomo(a)toad.com" with the following command ->in the body of your email message: -> -> unsubscribe cypherpunks cypherpunks(a)toad.com So it is but a small leap of logic to remove the 'un' in order to subscribe, since to my knowlege the Welcome message does not tell you how to subscribe. A human interface problem? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller | "The Internet, of course, is more +1 415 390 9732 | than just a place to find pictures | of people having sex with dogs." stevenw(a)best.com | -- Time Magazine, 3 July 1995

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Re: Court proceedings under new SAFE act
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green asked about judges of the FISA court, and Declan named Joyce Green. The Chief Judge of FISA is Royce Lambert, who gave talk on C-SPAN about the operation of the court at an ABA conference in D.C. a few months ago. He made the point that few applications for electronic surveillance are turned down by the court (of 8,000 applications 12 were denied) because the judges coach the applicants until they get a request right. And that the DoJ teams are quite adept at complying with the court's requirements, because all pass muster first of a special office set up for that purpose. Judge Lambert said the job is "a lot of fun" because its deals with supremely critical events of national urgency, and that all the judges involved really do like it, especially the secrecy and prestige of being part of one of the most exclusive groups in Washington. This is not a joke. Indeed, the Chief joked that the court's role "may be constitutional." And then said that he'll probably get in trouble for the statement. For how the snoop system is supposed to work see the Foreign Intelligence Suveillance Act: http://jya.com/fis.htm (107K)

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Re: CJR returned to sender
by Richard.Johnson＠Colorado.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Froomkin wrote: >I agree strongly with Tim May that this (fun) little joke has gone far >enough. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but the CJR was clearly frivolous, >the T-Shirt was clearly not a munition, IMHO, and that's that. Write up >the experience, post it on the web somewhere (I'll provide a space if you >need it), and call it a day. The CJR for the t-shirts was not frivolous. Not in the least. Letting the NSA/Dept. of State off the hook on this one leaves them with wiggle room. The goal of filing these CJRs is to find out just where the NSA/Dept. of State draw their lines, and to _force_ them to draw lines where they'd rather retain flexibility. At the very least, we can point out the rather strange ideas they have about what constitutes speech, for the PR value, during the splashes of media attention silly CJR rulings generate. Even more useful: other things remaining equal, a rigid agency is safer to deal with than one that retains the flexibility to selectively harrass. Richard

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Spooks' New Charter
by Kent Borg, remove X for real email 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been thinking about the secret briefings the CIA/NSA/pick-your-TLAs have given to folks such as the House National Security Committee, the briefing that caused them to gut SAFE. What did they say? What are they after? Now, with the 50th anniversary of the CIA, there are some news stories such as one I saw in the International Herald Tribune--also available at <http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-09/14/155l-091497-idx.h…>

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Re: Fred, Fred, Fred: Enough already!
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:58 AM 10/24/95 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: > Can we please talk to Dr. Fred, the Poster Child of the Informal Fallacy, > if we *really* have to, off line? Yes, please, will everyone please killfile Dr Fred. I am tired of seeing things that are glaringly obvious explained in painful detail to someone who is reluctant to understand them. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Welcome to cypherpunks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:16 PM 10/26/95, Steven Weller wrote: >Well, the Welcome message says this: Actually, not "the" Welcome message, but a particular instance of it, namely, the instance directed at the new subscriber (in this case, cypherpunks(a)toad.com was the new subscriber). >->If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, >->you can send mail to "Majordomo(a)toad.com" with the following command >->in the body of your email message: >-> >-> unsubscribe cypherpunks cypherpunks(a)toad.com > >So it is but a small leap of logic to remove the 'un' in order to >subscribe, since to my knowlege the Welcome message does not tell you how >to subscribe. A human interface problem? Except that the list would _have_ to have been subscribed to itself _before_ that particular Welcome message would have gone out. Sort of a binding issue. I would prefer the Welcome message to always say the command is: unsubscribe cypherpunks yournamehere and subscribe cypherpunks yournamehere But this is presumably a Majordomo feature. In any case, let's hope subscribing the list to itself is not a trend. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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CAS_bah
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-22-95. NYPaper: "High Stakes, High Tech. Imagine the Internet As Electronic Casino." Mr. Fields is the former director of Darpa. He now hopes to transform the Internet, developed to defeat the evil empire, into a powerful medium for indulging America's growing weakness for wagering, to bring casinos to the people -- and into the center of American life, the home. "When I was looking around for what I would do next I decided to do something in the entertainment and gaming industries because they're now the greatest users of advanced technologies," Mr. Fields said. "It used to be the defense industry." CAS_bah (6 kb)

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Re: CJR returned to sender
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:30 AM 10/26/95, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > Should they also reject the same content (RSA-PERL) delivered >in any of the following ways: > > Printed on paper > Printed on paper in OCR font > Printed on paper in barcode > Printed on paper with magnetic ink (like checks) > > The lines being drawn here seem very arbitrary. I'll try to think like a bureaucrat responsible for actually trying to limit the export of weapons, munitions, cluster bombs, nerve gases, secure communications gear, crypto tools, etc. My test would be this: "Is the product actually usable by an adversary or helpful to them in any major way as a tangible product?" (I have no idea of what their review criteria are, just suggesting some plausible considerations.) How different products get evaluated by these criteria: * cruise missiles -- Yes. * designs for cruise missiles -- Yes. Blueprints, especially. Books are more problematic, as the U.S. has no tendency to screen books for publication, and no border checks for books. (Not that outgoing luggage ever gets checked anyway.) * functional crypto systems, such as RSA products or PGP -- Yes, thinking as a bureaucrat. (I won't argue the effectiveness of such steps, or the ultimate futility of trying to control software export.) * "RSA in Perl," even in machine-readable form. I would not block export of it, as it is not a "usable system" (no key management, unwieldy to use). The proof of the pudding: how many people are using "RSA in Perl" to actually communicate? How many Pablo Escobars or Saddam Husseins are likely to ever use it? (If the argument that the few lines of RSA in Perl "give away" the secret of RSA, this is bogus. The core steps are widely, widely (did I say "widely") known, and are standard programming examples. One of the first things I did in Mathematica, several years ago, was to code up "RSA in Mathematica"...took about 15 lines, without much effort to compact it.) * "RSA in Perl" on an unreadable t-shirt. Yes. Yes, thinking as a bureaucrat I would certainly approve it. Or try to lose it, return it unopened, etc., knowing full well the CJR was being done as a publicity stunt (well, isn't it?) and that reporters were waiting to make the State Department look foolish by reporting: "State Department Rules "Munitions T-Shirt" May Be Exported!" (Or to look just as foolish by rejecting it.) --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: 80 bit security from 40 bit exportable products
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Even if you assume complete independence of key setup, if a successful >decryption at each layer can be independently detected and verified >(which seems likely in your example), there're only about 3 * (2 ^ 40) >total operations in the worst case, NOT 2 ^ (3 * 40) operations needed >to expose the plaintext. This is an effective 41.5 bits, not 120. > Of course. It comes down to whether each encryption step plans some known plaintext to be used for brute force testing of any next layer.

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Re: [Noise] Perrynoia in the Comics
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:13 AM 10/26/95 -0400, you wrote: > >Alan Olsen writes: >> This has no real crypto relevence, but some anarchistic relevence. > >Alan; > >As much as I found the comment interesting, it probably belonged >somewhere like libernet-d, not here on cypherpunks. I posted it on Cypherpunks becuase it is the only list I take where such political views are even mentioned. I thought that people on the list would enjoy it. I prefaced it with [noise[] so that people who would object would skip over it. Evidently that disclaimer is not enough anymore. >[I'm posting this in public, as I do about one in ten such messages, >so that a wider audience of people will be discouraged from posting >such things in advance. Don't bother mailing me a message saying "you >are adding to the noise yourself, why not mail in private" -- I do >that 90% of the time. Sometimes the nose levels rise enough that I >feel that a few public mentions would do some good.] I am not certain as to the "nose levels" as I thought they stopped publishing a number of months back. I think you need to get some treatment for those hardening of the orthodixies. | Visualize a world without lawyers! | alano(a)teleport.com | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmerman unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | | -- PGP 2.6.2 key available on request -- | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano | <fnord> |

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RE: Let's Not Merge Mailing Lists, OK?
by ali＠eit.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greetings, The problem is reducing the noise at cypherpunks list, so all communities can benefit from it, and not the "varying levels of competence" different communities may have. What more noble cause is there than to educate others of your beliefs. A well thought out question or cross-point is not noise but a poorly-backed false claim certainly is. In special instances, cross-postings enable the cypherpunk community and the other communities to interact together to produce real-life solutions that real people would care to use. Thinking on the social issues such as anonymity and privacy with no regards to what other communities think about or have to say is simply not optimum. Now if there is technical issues, such as mail-loops or some such thing against cross-postings, please inform. Regards, Ali p.s. Being subscribed to cypherpunks is not a prerequisite for following the list; thanks to its hypermail archive and numerous filters.

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Re: Anonymity: A Modest Proposal
by loki＠obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I think the idea of a token has come up before. I think it is a good idea. The token should have some expiration information in it so the remailer need not keep it around forever (or it could just "forget" all token older than 3 months). Right now there is not much spare room in the Mixmaster headers. There are several ideas for improvements in Mixmaster that will require the adoption of an incompatible message format. I plan to collect them and implement them all at once. One of the ideas is an expiration date in the message to keep it from ever being replayed (even after the remailer expires its record of the message ID). -Lance At 7:43 AM 10/26/95, Adam Shostack wrote: >Lance Cottrell wrote: > >| How open is the protocol? Is there and API for it? Does anyone know how big >| the coins are? There will have to be room for one per header in Mixmaster. >| Do they vary in size, or are all coins identical? There is so much stuff to >| try to keep track of all at once! :/ > > If the coin is bigger than a Mix header has room for, does it >have room for an arbitrary token? > > I send a message to the mixmaster I'd like to use, containing >a coin and a large arbitrary number. I then put that number in a list >I maintain of the tokens I can spend with that mixmaster. > > The mixmaster cashes the coin at once[1], and puts my number >into a list of 'paid' tokens it will accept. > > When I want to spend the token, I put that in the message >header block. Since its smaller than the coin, its easier to put in >the header than the coin. > > This scheme also reduces mapability between the coin and the >message, since they are not strongly correlated in time as they would >be if they were included in the message. This seems to be a stronger >win than the size benefit that caused me to suggest this. > > [1] Other than the time mapping win, I could also see spending >a few bucks at the start of each month to be able to use any >mixmaster. The mixmasters would, by cashing my coins early, win on >the float between the time they get my money and the time they provide >service. Icing on the cake. > >Adam > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMI/NvfPzr81BVjMVAQGcbgf/b9wzPqGoijggurIm3uGiddSyaz2uAEXj 65INp6g/Va/Yf1q3+vQfyfixs3jviihmPMgepjs/deQqV5qxgEh05kbyvgKDf8wX vh8cVLTYMKpqGOU34K/9jLOXD9gZqvKBdDy9Z5YsLimDRV3ju9uRpBSLnUaiI1rU whpP+py/hqgFl0DL4Ybx5PBZDbcSkRhSqmlnx46/hbyY/bnaiTplPtMAU8oHZTK6 VOSB3hsPtfpGuKwCqe60WeZZDQygPbD6aDW+BZl4kMSv5+1kf4/aHECCOUqfzmvc O1Jmr6K8wLLtp/S12qRKh4SIEea9TUqN4PoV6YGQTBV1gM6MxC/GrQ== =qSuu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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newsweek oct 30 Levy digital cash article
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

a slick article by Steven Levy appears in the oct 30 Newsweek mag (cover Farrakhan). I'll let the ILF post it, but here are a few of the elements: - covers mark twain bank going live with Chaumian "e-money" - also a sidebar on Mondex.. - 1st virtual mentioned - Bruce Sterlings "heavy weather" e-money dystopia - Netscape flaw as example of the stakes - US government get into the act? - privacy concerns (EPIC Rotenberg quoted) - "tax may be voluntary" --Barlow - FinCEN worried about drug money I didn't find any obvious errors or overhyped paranoia, so I commend Levy on the article. it can be seen as a definite cypherpunk cap-feather. Levy is doing a really great job IMHO. an editorial in an earlier issue of newsweek about Rimm and pornography in cyberspace was dead bang on.. p.s. I'm very curious about the "information security" reference that someone gave earlier, has there been any more information here about that one? -- also, my question about whether one loses the downloaded Chaumian bucks if one's hard drive crashes was answered in the affirmative by Levy. hoo boy, I think this could become one of the worst new urban legends about losing money due to failed hardware/software. there is going to be a lot of paranoia about this item. I'll bet virtually all digital buck schemes will have to explicitly answer this question to a paranoid public: what happens if my computer crashes? part of my motivation for querying about losing cash due to a hardware failure was based on an interest in showing how the really "soft" system of credit card purchasing that we have now, while considered lame by a lot of cypherpunks, often protects the consumer. remember, Jane Sixpack is frequently locking her keys in a car. ecash that can be lost or stolen just like real cash may not be as attractive as say a credit card system whereby one can sometimes call up the company and say afterwards, "I didn't really mean that". cypherpunks should consider that one of the key things we think is the strength of ecash--namely privacy-- may be a key area the opposition to untracable cash transactions can tout as a weakness or problem. it seems to me that the very techniques that tends to enhance privacy also tend to make the spending "more dangerous" in the sense that one cannot backpedal or one can lose it, irretrievably, more easily. for a public with the IQ of Joe and Jane Sixpack, this could be a serious concern. identification is key to helping people retrieve lost or stolen checks, etc. "have you ever locked your keys in your car? don't use digital ecash. you might lose it and never get it back." I suggest that Chaum definitely consider this a major aspect in his marketing campaign. it could be a very serious soft spot in widespread public acceptance of ecash. rumors could float, "ecash is dangerous to the consumer". hopefully we can head this one off at the pass. imho, the future will never see complete digital cash, or complete identification. they are likely to mix a lot. however I think ecash may become very respectable, and ultimately become far more common than identified transactions are today. but its really amazing how no serious alarm flags have been going off in the legislative arena about digital cash. I suspect this is going to become a white-hot public policy issue. if you thought the fights over terrorism, wiretapping, or pornography laws were messy, just wait until legislators pinpoint digital cash as the horseman of the infocalypse. fireworks will fly. may you survive interesting times. <g>

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Digitial Money [SHAMELESS PLUG FOR BOOK]
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Leslie Lundquist, a co-worker of mine here at Electric Communities, together with Dan Lynch from Cybercash & Interop fame, has written a book called _Digital Money: The New Era of Internet Commerce_. It should appear in stores "real soon now"; it can be ordered right now from any book store for $24.95. The book is intended as an overview of current and projected digital payment systems and commerce, and contains basic background information on the underlying technology. It is intended for the general reader: this is the kind of book a techno-weenie might buy for his or her manager to help them understand some of these issues. Note that this is a different book than _Digital Cash_, by Peter Wayner. I'm not in the loop on this, but this appears to be "one of those things" and not intentional on anyone's part. For more information, e-mail leslie(a)communities.com

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